In many places, particularly in commercial establishments such as a restaurant or bar, it is desirable to provide audio and/or video broadcast to the occupants. Additionally, it may be desirable to change the source of the broadcast at various times during the day, such as changing radio stations, switching from audio broadcast to television broadcast or vice versa, or switching to prerecorded audio or video sources. Such changes may be made manually, but this method has several serious drawbacks. First, it requires that the restaurant personnel, who likely have several other duties to perform, remember when it is time to change the program source. If it is desired to switch, for example, from an audio source to a video source at a particular time in order to broadcast a sporting event to the patrons of the restaurant or bar, if it is not remembered to switch the program source in time, the patrons may be displeased. Secondly, there is no control to keep unauthorized personnel from altering the audio or video selection in a way that may be displeasing to the patrons, such as playing objectionable material or increasing the volume of "favorite songs." Lastly, most hired labor in restaurants and bars do not have the requisite skills necessary to properly adjust the tone controls of sophisticated stereo equipment in ways that are particularly advantageous to the given listening environment and purpose of the broadcast.
In a commercial establishment such as a restaurant or bar, where the audio and/or video source is used to enhance the ambiance, the above described problems can have devastating consequences. For example, in restaurants, the second most common reason that patrons don't return (the number one reason being bad service), is that the music was too loud, or conversely, that it was not loud enough to cover the conversation and other noises near the patron. In such service oriented businesses, these types of problems can result in failure of the business. Proper use of the volume and tone controls on the selected audio or video source can enhance the ambiance of the listener's environment. For example, when a restaurant is very busy, such as during peak breakfast, lunch and dinner hours, there will be a distracting amount of noise created by the restaurant serving noises and the general din of a roomful of conversation. Proper control of the volume and tone controls on the program source can be used to mask such noises while promoting conversation. For example, the music may be equalized to lower the volume in the audio frequencies in the range of the human voice while increasing the volume in the low and high ends of the audio spectrum. This gives the listener the pleasant sensation of talking in a fairly quiet room, while the music covers the restaurant serving noises in the low and high frequency ranges. This equalization scheme also gives considerable abatement to noise from adjoining tables.
The "in between" diners after lunch typically read or are in a hurry, so the overall volume of the program source should be lowered, and the equalization profile in the frequency range of the human voice is increased in order to promote a sense of privacy in the listeners. Alternatively, in a bar, the equalization in the voice frequencies should be raised slightly in the early evening to encourage louder, more social conversation. Later in the evening, the voice frequencies can be lowered in volume in order to encourage the continuation of softer conversation.
Such equalization control may also be used to advantage in business environments, where the equalization profile can be used to cover annoying machinery sounds, used to make sales conversation easy, or employed to make conversation more difficult where, such as on an assembly line, discouraging conversation leads to greater accuracy of work.
Prior art audio and/or video controllers have proven unsatisfactory to handle all of the above problems adequately. Most such prior art devices comprise some sort of clock timer, usually a twenty-four hour timer, which may be programmed to select different audio and/or video sources at various times of the day. Because these device merely switch from one program source to another, they have no provision for preventing restaurant personnel from altering the characteristics of the source, such as volume and tone controls, or even the tuned broadcast source, such as the radio or television station. Additionally, such devices merely switch the program sources into and out of connection with a central speaker system, and therefore cannot dynamically alter the tone controls (and hence the equalization profiles) of the program sources.
There is therefore a need in the prior art for a device that is capable of automatically selecting from among a plurality of available program sources for broadcast through an attached speaker and/or video system while controlling the equalization profile of the program source. There is a further need for providing such a system that cannot be altered by unauthorized users. The present invention is directed toward meeting these needs.